1952 Willys Aero Ace – Straight Aero

Ed Snell's '52 Willys Is Like A Chicken With Teeth

To hear Ed Snell tell it, he’s always been a hot rod nut-when he was kid, he built his own race cars and drove them for a hobby. Then he took about 30 years off to make some bread and raise a family properly without any outside distractions. But the bug began to munch on him again, and he was “looking for a hot rod to play with.” Now that he had means, the idea of specific fantasies built to order somehow equated to an iteration of the ’32 Ford Coupe. So how come we’re looking at a Willys? According to Ed, it “was everything I wanted.”

Ed used to be a CPA. Do you think that had anything to do with his Mercury-to-Pluto decision? Or was it more like do we need another ’55 Chevy, no matter how cool that notion is, when the sight of something as obscure and pristine as the Willys will stay on your mind forever? Right!

We appreciate Ed’s unusual approach. The Willys feeds his pragmatism as well as his sense of aesthetics and the need for the occasional bloodletting. Arizona Street Rods built it for someone else, who sold it to a soul who actually drove it. Three years later, Ed made his marks on the Aero Ace, put it back in circulation, and drove the daylights out of it. The Ace has since logged more than 14,000 local miles behind that custom-built Banjo steering wheel.

We were taken with the Ace because the last time we saw one this clean was in 1955. It has all the social amenities: thoroughly modern and effective cooling and ventilation, a far-reaching sound system, power assists, suspension from a 280Z, and a fuel-injected engine. “There’s room enough to carry six adults, it’s fast, good-looking, reliable, and comfortable,” says Ed. “That adds up to a lot of fun.” Like it was in the old days, when you packed all the goodies inside the car, under the hood, and out of sight.

“I enjoy all the smiles and thumbs up, and I hear a lot of stories from people who had similar cars in their youth. Its uniqueness and the expert craftsmanship in the rebuild as a street rod are appealing. The old guys like it because it looks stock, and hot rodders like the running gear,” Ed opined.

The unaltered sheetmetal and original badging foster that stock appearance, and it remains understated in the wake of the big ‘n’ little Budnik wheels, wet burgundy paint, and that smooth biscuit-colored interior. The whole thing works so well that you don’t even mind that there’s a ’52 Willys underneath it all.

Driving his lightweight really gets Ed off. Its springy seats, wind wings, and the oversize steering wheel suck him right back into the ’50s (Ed’s 60), but the modern underpinnings give the ancient chassis a new and much livelier feel. As part of the last run of Willys cars built (1952-55), his Ace is basically a unibody construction that was augmented with front and rear subframes to support the 280Z suspension components. The front end is established by towers and MacPherson struts and the rear by a custom-built subframe. Though the narrowed 9-inch turns 4.11:1 gears, the overdrive automatic bites the hard edge off those cogs and makes cruising much more congenial.

Figuring that this little opus is a real featherweight (approximately 2,800 pounds) and that it’s hauling 350 lb-ft at the rear wheels, the Ace jumps off the mark and hits the mainline like a ’40s-vintage Willys Gasser, albeit a decade after the fact. Retiree Ed Snell has the stones to own and drive something much less predictable than a ’32 Ford or a ’67 Camaro, and look where it got him.